Page:The Constitutions and Other Select Documents Illustrative of the History of France, 1789-1907, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged.pdf/100

70 it shall name a president, a vice-president, and secretaries, and shall begin the exercise of its functions.

4. During the entire course of the month of May, if the number of the representatives present is under three hundred and seventy-three, the assembly shall not be able to perform any legislative act.

It can pass an order requiring the absent members to re- pair to their duties within the period of fifteen days at the latest, upon penalty of 3,000 livres fine, if they do not present an excuse which shall be pronounced legitimate by the assembly.

5. On the last day of May, whatever may be the number of the members present, they shall constitute themselves into National Legislative Assembly.

6. The representatives shall pronounce in unison, in the name of the French people, the oath to live free or to die.

They shall afterwards individually take the oath to maintain with all their power the constitution of the kingdom, decreed by the National Constituent Assembly, in the years 1789, 1790, and 1791; and not to propose nor to consent within the course of the legislature to anything which may injure it, and to be in everything faithful to the nation, the law, and the king.

7. The representatives of the nation are inviolable; they cannot be questioned, accused, nor tried at any time for what they have said, written, or done in the exercise of their functions as representatives.

8. They can, for criminal acts, be seized in the very act or in virtue of a warrant of arrest; but notice shall be given thereof without delay to the legislative body; and the prosecution can be continued only after the legislative body shall have decided that there is occasion for accusation.

Chapter II. Of the Royalty, the Regency, and the Ministers.

Section I. Of the royalty and the king.

1. Royalty is indivisible and is delegated hereditarily to the ruling family, from male to male, by order of primogeniture, to the perpetual exclusion of females and their descendants.